Stalin

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Joseph Stalin and the USSR

Nature of the USSR in the 1930’s

Cultural
  • Education changed: learn through productive labor
    • Universities controlled by the Vesenkha
    • Narrow specializations: functional lines
    • Russian nationalism
    • Good education system
  • Working class values in fiction, support view of the gov’t in literature
  • Worship of machine
  • Nationalistic, socialist propaganda films

Purges
  • Show trials, confessionsè killed political rivals, anyone perceived as threatening
  • Increased punishment for small crimes, harsher
  • State power increased, contrary to Marxist doctrine: power struggle
  • Even after 1936 constitution, freedoms (speech, press) were still limited
  • Increased power of NKVD

Foreign Policy
  • Rise of fascism: misinterpreted, especially Hitler
  • Joined League of Nations: repair relations with Europe
  • Spanish Civil war participation
  • Molotov-Ribbentrop Pactè keep USSR out of war, had purged entire general staff, were not equipped at all for a European war
  • Winter War: Finland beaten
  • Bad relations with Hitler, demands when in no position to bargain, Berlin 1940
  • Barbarossa- complete surprise, goal had been to stay out of war in Europe: failed!
  • In the end: defeat of Germany, USSR occupies, becomes a great power, buffer zone in Europe from future invasions from west

Stalinism
  • Collectivization, bureaucracy, terror
  • Stacking the party in Stalin’s favor
  • Strong econ and military
  • Cult of personality of Stalin, dictatorship, Stalin made all the decisions
  • Classical totalitarian state

Politics and Econ Policy
  • Fear of foreign economic intervention
  • 1st FYP, 1929: collectivization, kolkhoz, liquidation of kulaksè terror in the countryside
  • Real Politik: distanced himself from the bad things happening- democratic centralismè slaughter of livestock, famine
  • Increased industrialization, phase out of NEPè harsh punishments for not working, caused bad conditions
  • 2nd FYP: increased wages, standard of living, agricultural output, still rationing, emphasis on heavy industry
  • forced labor: NKVD

Driving forces behind Stalin’s policies:
  • Socialism: need for industrial workers
  • Self-sufficiency of USSR: isolation
  • Grain supplies: self-sufficiency, sold/exported, seemed bountiful (not actually a surplus)
  • Maintain personal power
  • Improve standard of livingè can show west how successful socialist system is